Far from the inner sanctum of Europe due to the legacies of the past: the use of analogy in the discourse on EU enlargement in the Western Balkans

The aspirations of the Western Balkan countries towards Europe have become central to the political and social life of the region. This paper examines the linguistic representation of the Western Balkans and the discourse surrounding their European integration in online pan-European media articles written in English. The discourse of European integration for the Western Balkans often includes analogical references to past conflicts, whose remnants continue to the present time and pose significant challenges to the region’s progress. By analysing the temporal domain of this discourse through the lens of Discourse Space Theory and Proximization Theory, analogical temporal proximization more specifically, and its projection of values onto the axiological domain, this paper looks at the ideological function of language and explores the extent to which the Western Balkans is perceived as a region where past conflicts threaten future stability and how EU accession is viewed as a path to long-awaited liberation and prosperity.